McKenna West is a 28-year-old nurse from Alaska who agreed to be a surrogate for a couple and carry their child. At 20 weeks, the baby was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome — a serious heart condition that requires three surgeries, starting shortly after birth. The biological parents, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, told West to abort. She said no.
Now they're suing her for more than $100,000.
The surrogacy contract included a clause permitting termination upon fetal abnormalities, and Gilkar and Ahmed invoked it. West refused to comply. She fled to Texas, where she gave birth to a boy on August 12, 2026 — two weeks early — at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. The baby underwent the Norwood procedure, a complex palliative heart surgery, at Children's Medical Center of Dallas.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an intervention on August 11, just one day before the birth. He asked a Texas district court to enter orders directing the child's care, prohibiting his removal from the state, and setting an expedited hearing on any refusal of treatment. The court established the baby as a Texas resident and obligated the medical centers to provide care. The Department of Family and Protective Services was authorized to monitor the child and protect him from medical neglect.
"Every life matters," West said. "No woman should be forced to end the life of the baby she is carrying — including me. Baby Gabriel should receive a chance at life."
That name — Gabriel — is West's choice. The biological parents call the child Rumi. It's a detail that tells you everything about where these two sides stand.
The lawsuit seeks to recover the $60,000 paid to West under the original surrogacy contract plus additional damages exceeding $100,000. Lee Budner, the attorney for Gilkar and Ahmed, called West's actions "baseless" and "in violation of multiple court orders out of both Alaska and California." Budner also issued a statement that "Rumi is now recuperating under the loving care of his parents and his heroic team of doctors, nurses, and medical staff," adding it was "the last update on Rumi's health that his family intends to share."
West's attorney, Lincoln Wilson, sees it differently. "She is seeking parentage of the child because she gave birth in Texas, and in Texas, if you give birth to a child, it's your child," Wilson said. He also noted the biological parents "haven't given her anything since she declined to terminate the pregnancy."
Amy O'Donnell, Executive Director of the Texas Alliance for Life, didn't mince words. "It's horrific to think that so-called intended parents told the surrogate mother that they wanted her to abort that child," she said. "That's horrific at any stage to want to abort a child simply because of a disability or a diagnosis."
Andrew Mahaleris, press secretary for Texas Governor Greg Abbott, reinforced the state's position: "Our laws protect every child born in Texas and guarantee their right to life."
The legal arguments from Gilkar and Ahmed's side rest on contract enforcement. West signed a document. She agreed to certain terms. She violated those terms. In a purely transactional reading, they have a case.
But that transactional reading requires you to treat a living child — one who is, right now, recovering from heart surgery in a Dallas hospital — as a defective product that should have been returned. The contract clause didn't say "discuss options." It said terminate. A 28-year-old nurse looked at that clause, looked at the ultrasound, and decided a treatable heart condition wasn't a death sentence.
Three states are now tangled in this — Alaska, where the contract was signed, California, where additional court orders were issued, and Texas, where the baby was born and where state law recognizes the woman who gives birth as the legal mother. Multiple jurisdictions, multiple court orders, and at the center of it, a kid named Gabriel who just had his first heart surgery.
The surrogacy industry has spent years marketing itself as a compassionate path to parenthood. The brochures don't mention the clause where you get to demand someone else's body terminate a pregnancy because the product didn't meet specifications.
Gabriel is alive. He's recovering. The people who paid $60,000 to create him are now spending legal fees to argue he shouldn't be. Somewhere in a Dallas hospital, a nurse from Alaska is fighting for custody of a child she carried, delivered, and refused to let die.
That's not a contract dispute. That's a character test.